This invention relates to specific phospholipid compositions for providing an improved animal feed, particularly compositions prepared from soya bean extracts.
Particular soya bean lecithins may be incorporated into animal feeds with beneficial effects on animal performance, especially growth rates. Soya bean lecithin is routinely used as an additive for animal diets, typically in amounts ranging from 0.1 to 3%, and is a permitted emulsifier for this use under EC Feed Regulations. Benefits provided by the lecithin incorporated in the animal feed include increased digestibility of fat and transport of lipids out of the liver. Lecithin may also provide a good source of choline. It is frequently included in compound animal feeds, milk replacers and aquatic diets.
Crude lecithin contains a variety of phospholipids and glycolipids as well as small amounts of phosphatic acid and neutral lipids. The most abundant phospholipids are phosphatidylcholine (PC), phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) and phosphatidylinositol (PI). Phospholipases and lipases produced naturally by certain strains of bacteria, fungi and other organisms, or enzymes extracted from animal pancreas, can be used to achieve a conversion of the phospholipids to their deacylated derivatives known as lysolecithins, such as lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC), lysophosphatidylethanolamine (LPE) and lysophosphatidylinositol (LPI). These lysolecithins have a beneficial impact in animal growth when compared with lecithins (Schwarzer K and Adams C, Lipids 98 [1996] and UK Patent No. 2267033).
It has been known for some time that different lipid mixtures can have important and widely different effects on biological membranes. For example, the active lipid mixture AL721 is synthetically prepared from neutral glycerides, phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine in the ratio of 7:2:1 and has been used to inhibit attachment of viruses to cell surface receptor sites (Effects of Novel Compound (AL721) on HTLV-II Infectivity in vitro. Sarin P; Gallo R; Scheer D; Crews F; and Lippa A. New England Journal of Medicine 313 [1985] No. 20 1289-1290). This precise ratio of lipids appears to permeabilise the membrane and is associated with a decrease in membrane bound cholesterol (A Special Lipid Mixture for Membrane Fluidisation; Lyte M and Shinitzky M. Biochem Biophys Acta 812 [1985] 133-138).
It is an object of the present invention to provide new compositions for producing an improved animal feed which have beneficial effects on animal performance, especially growth rates.
A further object of the present invention is to provide new compositions which may be produced from crude lecithin, thereby providing compositions which are cheaper to produce and may be manufactured in bulk.
Accordingly, a first aspect of the present invention provides an animal feed supplement comprising a phospholipid composition having the following components in the ratios given:
Preferably, the ratio of components in the composition is as follows:
The composition may include additional phospholipids, such as phosphatidylinositol (PI), acylphosphatidylethanolamine (APE), inositol (PI), diphosphatidyl glycerol (DPG), phosphatidic acid (PA) and lysophosphatic acid (ILPA).
A preferred composition of the present invention has the following empirical formula:
The composition is preferably provided in an animal feed as a concentrate with a carrier, such as, silica talc, preferably being included in an amount of 10-40% by weight, more preferably 25%. Alternatively, the composition may be provided in solution.
The present invention will now be further illustrated by means of the following Examples in which Example 1 relates to an investigation into the uptake of the dye 3-[4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl]-2,5diphenyltetrazoliumbromide (MTT) by a monolayer of Vero (monkey kidney) cells using cells treated with a composition of the present invention and cells treated with standard lecithin, Example 2 relates to an in vitro experiment to investigate the permeability of cell plasma membranes using cells which had been treated with a composition of the present invention and cells which had been treated with standard lecithin, by means of treating the respective cells with a media containing radioactive fatty acids and Example 3 relates to an in vivo experiment to determine the increase in daily liveweight gain in pigs fed with a feed supplement containing a composition of the present invention or standard lecithin, and with reference to the accompanying drawings in which: